Kindling (Warriors 106, Heat 110)

With Ellis and Maggette out, there’s no evidence yet that the Warriors are going to win more games. What is becoming clear, however, is that losses without the star players are more watchable than those with them. It’s traditional Warriors’ logic — finding ways to turn not-quite-enough performances against sub-par teams into something praiseworthy — but there’s some method to the madness, as evident in the 106-110 loss to the Heat. Without Maggette and Ellis pounding the ball, Stephen Curry continues to grow into the floor general we hoped he would be. He still looks like a rookie occasionally, as with the last second pass behind Ronny Turiaf and a few rushed shots over the course of Tuesday’s game, but he continues to do something so few Warriors have done this year or last: make his teammates better.

Although the Warriors only brought eight men to Miami, they got a nice effort from nearly all of them (Devean George still looks like he’s counting down the days to retirement). What the team current lacks in raw talent, it’s attempting to compensate for in energy and unselfish play. The Warriors played decent defense most of the night and moved the ball to get everyone involved in the offense. It wasn’t enough to bring home a win, but it was enough to put them in a position to win — and given what the team is working with at the moment it is hard to ask for much more. We’ll see over the next few days whether the effort and focus levels remain high as the road trip drags on, but for the first night the team looked like it believed it could steal a win against the struggling Heat.

A few things ultimately went wrong in the Warriors’ upset attempt:

Don Nelson pulled a Nellie — Out-rebounded badly in the first half? What better way to respond than by going even smaller to start the second. The Warriors played 11 minutes in the third quarter with Devean George at power forward — and ended up at -4 for the stretch, including a particularly ugly 16-4 run. What mismatch was Nelson hoping to exploit? Your guess is as good as mine, but 0-3, 2 rebound performance during the quarter was further evidence of the double standard that continues to exist in his system. The team fought back once it returned to 2 bigs, but the deficit ultimately proved too great.

The jump shooters settled — with only O’Neal and Haslem bringing any interior size, the Warriors should have had a better night getting to the rim. Watson managed to get to the basket in transition, but once the game slowed down almost every Warrior settled for long-range jumpers over direct attacks at the key. The exception, however, were the nice plays run by Curry all night long to get Turiaf and others easy close-range looks. Those moves will be even more dangerous if/when Randolph and Wright are on the receiving end, but for now the Warriors’ rag-tag front line turned in a nice offense effort thanks to Curry’s vision. Just because Curry, Watson and Morrow can hit jump shots at a relatively high percentage doesn’t mean they can settle for them. When their shots aren’t falling — as was the case Tuesday — they need to work more to adapt their games.

The long odds took their toll — with a squad run by a rookie and staffed by 5 undrafted players, there are bound to be some rough edges. The Warriors managed to cover up their blemishes most of the night, but things came undone a bit in the final minutes. Morrow pulled up for an unnecessarily quick three. Curry and Turiaf failed to connect on a dump off to the rim. Unnecessary fouls were committed. With a slightly more talented squad, or at least a team used to playing together, the collective experience might have been enough to help the team navigate those treacherous late-game possessions. But with a roster now largely composed of spare parts, it was only a matter of time before the team looked the part. As frustrating as the end of the game was, it can’t come as a shock given the current stay of the Warriors’ roster.

For the late-season, lottery-focused world of the Warriors, Tuesday’s loss was just about the perfect outcome. The team looked good enough to build a little confidence, but didn’t actually jeopardize any ping-pong balls with a win. The tough question is whether this game would have come out differently with Monta and Corey in the line-up? I’m not so sure. Maggette likely would have made little impact, getting abused by Beasley and logging major minutes at power forward instead of Tolliver, who played well at both ends. Ellis could have helped the team with crunch-time scoring, but would have needed the ball more earlier in the game when Curry was doing such a nice job sharing the touches. I also doubt Ellis would have played much better defense than Watson, who was abused by Wade for much of the night (like the rest of the NBA) but also came up with some excellent overplay steals. I’m not claiming the Warriors are better without Ellis and Maggette — only that they’re not much worse.

Adam Lauridsen

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March 3rd, 2010 at 6:45 pm
meir34 says:
Any idiot can say whatever they want.

truer words have never been spoken here.
the prosecution rests their case

Arvid

Was happy to hear Barnett put down the significance of back to back games, essentially the same as Big Nate did. I’m beginning to believe that it’s the old school guys who mostly played for the love of the game that get this, whereas the young guys just seem to be looking for whatever excuse they can dig up when their play goes south.
jsl, you have my sympathy; going through it as well with mine, and dealing with it has brought nothing but great sadness.
With Monta and Maggette out, I’m looking forward to Curry getting one more of those crazy stat games that will separate his rookie year from MJ’s, while sharing the stage with Oscar, the greatest I ever saw play.

Livermore

Meir, we get it…we are all overhyping Stephen Curry…we get. Can you please stop repeating yourself?